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IBM BPM vs Red Hat Polymita Business Suite comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM BPM
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (8th), Process Automation (5th)
Red Hat Polymita Business S...
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
55th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 7.4%, up from 7.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Polymita Business Suite is 0.1%, down from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

SureshThota1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Good automation, stable, and scalable
The initial setup is complex, but once we have a mature framework in place, it has been working well. When deployed properly and as expected, customers are happy to use the solution. However, there is still a lot of configuration and installation taking time. IBM BPM provides a cloud-fast model, where it is possible to integrate automation of the process and where manual interaction is only necessary if automation is not available. We have implemented an ultimate installation that includes both capabilities, but some features were not enabled in the process access station. For example, I could not open KFC documents, they all uploaded, and saved the data, but could not do a profile page without manual interaction. IBM is still working on a permanent solution for this. The deployment time depends on the requirements, which can be critical, low, or medium-high. If the requirements are critical, it will take six to eight months. For medium requirements, it will take five months, and for low requirements, it will take only one month. Eight people were part of the deployment team.
LY
Gives you the ability to design the screens outside the software and connect them as a component with the BPM engine
On the improvement part, I think the documentation for the tool, the official documentation, is not as strong as in other tools. You have lot of community. That is good. But sometimes you need - when you are working on a big client or a critical process - to be certain about certain things. So I think that the documentation for the tool, from the company, could be a little stronger. Also, the size of the team within Latin America. The size of the team that, in each country, knows about BPM - because of the size of Red Hat in comparison with the size of IBM or Oracle - is very little. You have maybe three or four people in the company, in Red Hat Mexico, that know about BPM; and in Peru, maybe one, who also needs to know about five other tools. You have help there, but sometimes you don't need that kind of help. You need to sit down with someone and take a good amount of time and discuss a process to solve a problem. It's a consequence of the size. IBM and Oracle are monsters. They have, say, 100 more employees than Red Hat. That is the problem. But on the other side, the price is good. You could pay four times less, five times less, in an average implementation with Red Hat than with IBM. So there is a trade-off.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"IBM BPM is easy to deploy."
"I like the APIs and the BPM coach is a good tool. But if I had to pick one, it would be the API."
"The functionality to design UI to be responsive and can run on multiple devices."
"It helps maintain, and in many instances, lower costs, as well as to maintain those costs, keeping them stable."
"Its dashboard is easy to use and very good. It allows us to customize."
"Compliance with the BPMN 2.0 standard."
"Automating the whole workflow process to give our data steward the ability to take actions rapidly, and making sure we have all the data synced within the different platforms that we are using."
"The reach with Integration Adapters and support for adding custom Java code are valuable features."
"The main factor that separates Red Hat software from Oracle, IBM, Pegasystems, is the ability that it gives you to design the screens outside the software and connect it as another component with the BPM engine."
 

Cons

"We need process monitoring. It is somewhat complex to monitor all the processes which work."
"I would like to see the front-end support improved because it should be fully integrated and supported."
"I would say the scalability is very good but it's not perfect. It is much more scalable than it has been in the past but... it does require some work to keep it stable. So that is an area that should be improved."
"They should incorporate an API gateway functionality within it to simplify integrations."
"I hope IBM uses something from IBM Content Navigator to make the interface easier to navigate."
"The product is extremely complex to use and administrate."
"We still have a couple of issues that we are working on right now with stability. Mostly on the configuration side of the tool, and it has been about a month that we have been working to stabilize the platform.​"
"The interface is limited and should improve in the future."
"I think the documentation for the tool, the official documentation, is not as strong as in other tools. You have lot of community. That is good. But sometimes you need - when you are working on a big client or a critical process - to be certain about certain things. So I think that the documentation for the tool, from the company, could be a little stronger."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is pricey."
"It may be cheaper for organizations to pay for the Viewer licenses that are immediately up and running in the cloud, rather than paying for someone to administer publishing to an intranet."
"The pricing is very high."
"I rate the tool's pricing a seven out of ten."
"The solution might be expensive, but I can't give you a precise number. In the market here, I've seen two main products for BPM: IBM BPM and Camunda. Camunda is very popular and open-source, so there's no direct comparison."
"Our customers do see ROI. They'll identify some particularly painful or uncoordinated processes to start with, then build out from there, picking off low hanging fruit."
"IBM BPM is expensive, so most large companies opt for IBM based on their licensing options."
"We have a yearly licensing model. It is not expensive. There are no addition costs to the standard license."
"Without any discount, you need tools that cost roughly between $80,000 to $100,000. That is less than with IBM. And on top of that you need the consulting. That will be another $200,000. So a quarter to a third of a million dollars is needed to use get started with BPM. So I usually recommend to my clients that they begin with a little project, with the community version. That way they don't spend $200,000 or $300,000, they spend $150,000 and zero on software."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
32%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better, IBM BPM or IBM Business Automation Workflow?
We researched both IBM solutions and in the end, we chose Business Automation Workflow. IBM BPM has a good user interface and the BPM coach is a helpful tool. The API is very useful in providing en...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM BPM?
Once it is installed, maintaining it is not a big issue.
Ask a question
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Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
Polymita Business Suite
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Barclays, EmeriCon, Banca Popolare di Milano, CST Consulting, KeyBank, KPMG, Prolifics, Sandhata Technologies Ltd., State of Alaska, Humana S.A., Saperion, esciris, Banco Espirito Santo
Bayer, Grupo Televisa, RCBC, Peavey
Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda, Apache, Pega and others in Business Process Management (BPM). Updated: February 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.